Godzilla vs Hedora (aka: Godzilla vs The Smog Monster) (1971)

Wow. Where to begin with this one. This Godzilla movie takes all the usual Godzilla movie traits rips them up, and spits on them. This is the odd movie out in the ‘Zilla franchise.

The movie starts with some weird tuba/trombone music. The sort of thing you expect to accompany a drunk man, or a lumbering beast. Except that there’s no drunk/beast. Just some title screens.

The theme song is also completely weird. The credits look like they’re from a Japanese James Bond flick. The song starts off all serious then bursts into a jaunty environmental number about how we’re destroying the planet.

After our jovial marching intro music we’re introduced to the main characters (a family) who are visited by an old hobo. The old guy brings them an odd looking tadpole thing. The father is a scientist (of some sort) who looks at it while reports of a monster sinking ships comes over the TV.

The dad decides to go diving for more info on this tadpole thing and ends up getting Hedora to the face. Yep. Hedora just rams into him like a torpedo. The father now spends pretty much the rest of this movie lying in bed with a bandage covering half his face. Probably the easiest money he’s ever made.

Pops looks at the now charcoal tadpole and discovers that, when in water, it becomes black sperm a tadpole again.

We’re now taken to a venue that shows the 70’s to a ‘t’. Psychedelic displays, and a band with just happen to be playing the same song from the intro. As if it wasn’t annoying enough the first time. But wait! There’s more! No sooner do we get a glimpse at Hedorah than we’re treated to a black and red screen with white animated skeletons dancing around the place. No seriously.

Hedora heads for the factories where he starts huffing the smoke from them. It must be some good shit as when Hedorah looks up it’s eyes are all red like a stoner.

Godzilla (finally!) appears at the 25min mark to tangle with Hedorah. Godzilla spins him around a few times sending blobs of mud into the hippies in the club. This is some rather toxic mud. Hedorah fires some poop mud at Godzilla and it burns him.

Hedorah flees and heads to the water. Godzilla gives chase.

Here, we get another utterly pointless animation of a factory with claws ripping up greenery.

This move is more trippy than the club! After the family examine some of said mud we get an animated lecture on space. THEN we find our that Hedorah can turn into a space ship.

What. The. FUCK.

Having flown over various places. Hedorah’s flyby causes them to melt into skeletons. So much for child-friendly. Cut to another animation of people walking about wearing gas masks.

As you can imagine. I have no fucking idea what this movie is trying to do here.

A bunch of people, probably the hippies from the club, are out in the middle of nowhere seemingly celebrating Hedorah. This is short-lived when Hedora turns up and they realise they’re scared shit less.

I’d also like to take a moment to ask what the FUCK this woman is dressed up as:

Godzilla appears, as does Hedorah, and an epic battle ensues. Make no mistake, Hedorah kicks Godzillas ASS.

The army has some bullshit plan to fire a beam to try and destroy Hedorah, but that doesn’t quite cut it. Hedorah is down and while on the deck Godzilla shoves his hands in and rips out, what I can only describe as, Hedorah’s balls. Behold:

Are they Hedorah eggs? Christ only knows.

He may be down, but he’s not out. Hedorah ups and flies off. As does Godzilla.

Yes, we find out that Godzilla can use his atomic breath to fly:

Fuck only knows what’s happening now. My head hurts.

Godzilla nabs Heroah. Gives him another beating. Grabs him and flies back to where they were previously so that the military can try this stupid ray gun thing again.

The ray gun doesn’t cut it but with the help of Godzilla’s atomic breath this finally finishes Hedorah. Fried to a crisp, Godzilla smashes up the corpse of Hedorah.

Job done, Godzilla heads off into the sunset.

Man, this movie is weird. It’s like they were trying to make a kid-friendly tree-hugging environmental movie, but forgot and put in dark scenes of people melting to skeletons and some testical ripping.

I need time to recover from this.

I’m knocking it down a full point because of the stupid, pointless, animations. But I’ll give it back a 0.5 because I find the kids mother rather cute.

About Ronnie

Having survived the UK's 'video nasty' (prohibition) era I'm eager to catch up with all previously unseen sleaze and filth. I revel in mixtape oddness, boobage, gore, and proper latex special effects, don't get me started on CGI... - email Ronnie